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- [00:00]
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Ultimately, you're trying to avoid the loss of your most precious asset, which is your time. And when ready, aim, fire becomes your default, that that's sequentially how you operate your child absolutely benefits. How is it possible for a parent of a child with autism to become the superhero their child needs now? I'm Len.
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And I'm Cass. When our son was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism, we went all in. We spent over a dec learning everything we could on how we could transform to help our son thrive. And guess what? He's doing it. This year, he ran for class president.
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Each week on this podcast, we will be sharing the secrets needed for you to become the superhero your child needs.
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If you want to learn how to tap into your innate superpowers to help your child thrive, visit autismparentingsecrets.com.
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Hello and.
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Welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. We are so excited you are here today and we are ready to dive deep into a simple yet powerful concept. It's ready, aim, then fire.
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A
We're just coming off of conducting a five day challenge. It was called the five days to superpowers challenge. And this concept came up and we thought it was a really effective way of looking at how a parent can actually improve how they're making decisions and how they're operating for their child. And it's really a simple sequence. We've all heard the term ready, aim, fire. And the secret this week is ready, aim, then fire for a very specific reason, and that is if you're anything like Cass and I early on in the journey, especially after when we first received the diagnosis, we spent pretty much all our time in fire just learning what we could and quickly taking action based on what we learned online or based on what some other practitioner may have suggested.
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B
And it wasn't even mindful fire. It was more like fire, fire, fire. Right? We wanted autism gone. We did not want it in our house. We were kind of treating it more like firefighters who versus anything that was actually mindful or truly on target.
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A
We were in pain. At least I was in pain. I was kind of reacting and not really thinking clearly. I just felt a lot of pain in my heart, was wanting as best I could to make good decisions and to be a great dad and to help my son let me take actions and make this thing go away. And because of that, the actions that we took and I encouraged Cass and I talked about, I didn't give them a lot of thought. I just wanted to do as much as I could as quickly as I could, hoping that something would Stick.
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Right. Well, we were also autism. The regression happened fast, so we kind of were like, okay, if we go after it as fast as it came, it could be gone by Christmas, right? Well, it wasn't. And I was also nine months pregnant with my daughter. So it was like, holy shit, what just happened? And how can we basically solve this problem now?
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Yeah. So we looked around and anybody who had a good idea, a suggestion, if we saw something online, we tried it, we invested, we put our time, money, energy into a lot of things early on. And some did help and others didn't. And so we know that a lot of parents are doing the same thing. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with responding and trying to help your child. And what we're throwing out there is that you can still respond in a powerful way, but to spend more time in the ready and more time in the aim and less time in the firing machine, gunning every possibility and doing perhaps too much or spreading yourself too thin, that that's not a recipe for success. And so when we think about this concept, it's a pretty obvious one. You hear about it, like in the military, Right. This is probably where it came from. Ready, aim, fire. It's important because there's limited ammunition that you have. So if you're trying to defeat the enemy, you need to kind of be ready, have your gun loaded, and be kind of ready to take action. You're going to aim at the target and then you're going to fire. Because ultimately there's limited resources and you want to take action in a targeted way at a specific target. Obviously, a military term doesn't apply to autism. We're not trying to get rid of.
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B
Anything, but the resource piece absolutely fits.
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A
It's how you're deploying your scarce resource. Exactly. And so it does apply here. Just like with my background, I did a lot of project work and process improvement type work at huge behemoth banks in corporate America. And whenever we would undertake a major initiative or a project to change a process or to improve a process, one of the key takeaways I had was that we spent so much more time early on on getting ready, really understanding the current process, analyzing it, measuring it, understanding the root cause of why it wasn't performing how it should. So for a typical project, like 40 to 50% of the time was spent on that ready phase of it, which I always thought seemed like a lot. But that's what made the project successful. Because if you just quickly go in and start taking action, there's a great chance that you'll miss the boat. And also a chance that you may do something that unintentionally not only doesn't help, but may actually set you back. So this idea of ready, aim, fire is sound, and it totally applies to how a parent's navigating. If I had to guess where I was in that first year, I think 95% of my time and effort was focused on firing, taking action, seeing what happened, and taking more and more action. The ready piece of it was maybe it was like 5%, and that was just me going online, researching, but I wasn't really focusing on myself and my capacity to really take in what I was hearing, understanding it, and getting my mindset and my knowledge and all that channeled in a way that made me truly able to make an informed decision that felt right. And the aim piece of it, for me, there was no aim. I was just trying to get rid of autism, and I didn't have any real detailed vision, and I definitely didn't have any goals that channeled kind of where I was focusing and. And what specifically I was doing.
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No, it was damage control, at least for me. It was like, fire, fire, fire. Because one is, I wanted to support my son. Two, we had a newborn daughter. Three, you were playing defense from judgment of others, or you were just trying to navigate what that system was like because there's so many moving pieces, and you just want to make sure that you're not missing anything. And that's where I know you're going to talk a little bit more specifically about the ready, aim, fire. But for me, like, my goals became the first therapist that came into the program. My goals became those goals because, you know, that's what, you know, first they sounded so much better than what I thought. But after that, it's like, oh, no, I had just adopted the goals that the therapist had put out there.
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Yeah. And that's a key part of the aim. Right. So whereas I had just one aim, which was getting rid of autism. You're talking about. Yeah. Then we evolved to where. To the extent that we did have specific aims or targets, it's what practitioners or therapists or other people had come up with. And instead of taking those and really internalizing them, we just went with whatever people were saying made sense. So we didn't really have that sense of ownership early on. And that's actually the concept of ownership is part of the ready phase. So ready is all about the way you kind of look at ready is. It's about you getting clearer on what's happening and what's happened in the past, what's happening now? Getting focused more on, okay, well why is what's happening happening? What might be the root cause? What are the different options? In addition, a big part of Ready is just your own taking care of yourself in the sense that are you in a position where you can make informed, well thought out decisions. And unless you're focusing on your own self care in some way, it's really hard to make good decisions. So that ready phase includes a lot. And as Cas just mentioned, the ownership piece of it is a big part of Ready, which I know was totally missing from how we were operating where we just deferred to experts. Whatever people said we went with and we didn't really internalize it and own it. Yeah.
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And if you think about everyone, and we were good at trying to find the experts that we could use their vision versus coming up with what was our own.
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At least initially we didn't see ourselves in the driver's seat. It was more like, okay, let's find people who know what they're doing.
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Right.
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So ready is something which we totally overlooked. And again, there's huge opportunity with expanding your intention in that very, very critical first phase.
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And that ready also is important. So taking details and being able to pay attention to what's going on for your child, keeping things like a food log or a food journal or hey, you know what? I notice behaviors at this time of day, just keeping track of those things will also help you in that ready stage. Be so much more prepared. So as you go to aim and fire, you're going to have more ammunition there or more insights that are going to help you.
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Yeah, there's no question that that's part of the greater clarity is just really knowing what's happening now. And then keeping logs of any kind can really help. So the second phase aim, what is the overall goal? Where are you going towards, whether it's for yourself or your child? And so we move on to the second phase aim. That's just getting really, really detailed and clear on where are you going? What's the outcome that you're looking at for or that you're going towards for yourself or your child? And again, for me it was just, I didn't want my son to have autism anymore and I didn't really. There was no point in even thinking it any further because that was the problem. But the real AIM was connection with our child and we didn't see that early on. And once you get clear on the true goal, what you're really going after, not only having that longer term vision and that longer term goal, but then to break that down into more manageable goals that really motivate and focus and they kind of channel your energy on something specific. So we talk about a lot about the idea of having a handful of very specific goals for yourself and your child that truly take that long term vision and break it down to something that's more achievable in a shorter term.
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B
It's like those baby steps.
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Yeah. Because otherwise, unless you find a way to make that longer term vision something and you do break it down, it just stays a long term vision. To break it down into manageable pieces is absolutely a key to success. So the ready and aim generally get discounted. So compared to where I started, ready maybe going from 5%, where I am now is trying to make that something more like 20%. So I'm spending more time on really being even more observant, asking why, ensuring that we're really addressing the root cause as opposed to just the symptoms of what's happening with our sun. And that's also where now I'm able to prioritize self care without guilt, without feeling like it's selfish, because I know that helps me to be in a position to make better decisions. And then the aim, whereas that was a scant 1% before, if even that. Now the idea of keeping the vision, that longer term vision alive and revisiting it every single day, making it bigger, making it more real to my nervous system and then not only making that long term vision big, but then having goals and targets that I set weekly for the things that matter most to me, that's a way that I'm making aim a much bigger percent. So it's going from like 1% to 5%, still a big jump. And that still leaves 75% for taking action. But that means that those actions, there's going to be fewer of them and the ones that we do will be done better. We'll be able to devote more of our full attention to doing a few things really well rather than machine gunning a whole bunch of actions and doing them all kind of half assed or so. So, so that's kind of where this all leads to if you just get more balance across those three different categories. Because otherwise it's just so easy to get caught up in the, in the weeds and the chaos of the day to day. So whenever you feel stuck just to kind of refer back to this framework, you know, ready, aim Then fire. Where am I in that? Is there something I can do now just to reorientate myself, to pull myself out of the chaos and figure out, do I need to reconnect to my vision? Is there maybe a way of having a more specific goal that can kind of focus? Or is there just something in terms of my mindset and what I'm believing right now that is adding maybe more pressure than is really something that's helping?
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And another thing is, do you just need a break? Like, do you need to go focus, you know, intentional, take a few intentional breaths or step outside and breathe air or get the sun on your face? Like, something to just kind of break whatever you're in? The other thing that's really connected to this, too, is when you have a vision. There was a photograph that I had of my son where I just knew he was in there. And whenever, you know, for my vision, it was that photograph as kind of where we were, what we were headed towards. So whatever your vision is for your child, I also encourage you to either find that photograph, draw a picture, or write a description about what you're going after in a very descriptive way and read it out loud or hanging up in a place that you can see it, because that's going to help reinforce your why, and you're going to know what you're going after. And this will truly, truly help you as that kind of North Star, or your guiding principle or guiding light as to where you're going.
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Yeah. And also with respect to the aim piece of it, building on what you just said, Cas and I talked about this in the Challenge as well last week. Andy Frisella, who has the Real AF podcast, and he also is somebody who invented 75 hard. It's kind of a way of building mental toughness. But in all of the tools that he talks about in his mind, there's nothing more powerful than people being able to take 10 minutes each day of dedicated visualization and 10 minutes of just thinking through, where are you going? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it sound like? And getting that unbelievably vivid depiction is incredibly powerful. And for us as parents, we could do that of what it's going to look like for our child. We can do that for what it looks like for ourself. In addition to everything that Cas mentioned. If you, on top of that, just have 10 minutes that you carve aside to really allow your mind to bring as much detail into that vision as possible, you will Be amazed what an impact that makes. And 10 minutes can seem like a long time. And it might be initially, you might struggle to keep it going for more than a couple minutes, but build up. And if you can every day have 10 minutes, that makes it bigger and bigger and bigger. It's so within your control to do, and it makes a gigantic difference. So that's another way of just making that aim even bigger.
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Well, and to that point, like the Ayurvedic coach that I've been working with too, she had me find a picture from when I was younger and have that available. So when I meditate to have that visual round, and it's so funny because I grabbed this picture and it's, you know, one that I just remembered loving. And I look at this and this girl was. I was happy, I was powerful, I was competent, and I was like, hell, yeah, I want that vision to come to life. Like this girl who is part of me, who is me. But it was just as that visual reminder for my meditation. It's like as I channel that energy, it's pretty powerful.
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Yeah. So the ready and the aim, you know, we've hit on it a few different ways, but those two phases cannot be discounted. The more intention you can give to building those up to whatever feels right for you will really have an impact. And if you want to, you want more details on kind of just self care, right, which is the ready piece, you know, episode seven is all about how self care is not optional. And if you want to focus more on the aim piece, episode 28, we talk about how without goals, there's chaos. So you can go deeper on those two topics with those episodes, but just reflect on it right now for yourself, just to pause to say, ready, aim, fire. And how you're operating right now, is that something that you need to revisit and maybe reestablish what would be useful for you? And if you feel like you're overly, let's say, too much on the fire, how can you pull yourself back to kind of get yourself on a course that feels better to you? Because ultimately you're trying to avoid the loss of your most precious asset, which is your time. And when ready, aim, fire becomes your default, that that's sequentially how you operate your child Absolutely. Benefits, they are served, since you're going to be able then to make better decisions for them. And that's what this is all about, because we know what a loving, caring parent you are, what a huge desire you have to be the best parent you can be for your child. Using Ready Aim Fire enables you to be a very effective parent as well.
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And that will also allow you to have time to carve out to spend with your child to build that connection.
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Yeah, if you're using Ready Aim Fire, presence becomes something that becomes more predictable for your child and more automatic for you. And what a gift that is.
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That is the ultimate gift. Want to learn how to avoid the 33 mistakes most autism parents make? Get your free training today. Visit autismparentingsecrets.com unstoppable.